[Firebringer 03] - The Son of Summer Stars (5 page)

“No!” shouted Jan.

He vaulted from the council rise, dashed to intercept his frenzied sire. Before him, Ses and Jah-lila parted, sprang in opposite directions to clear the raging stallion’s path. Jan managed to veer ahead of Lell, shield her. Korr plunged past in a dusky blur, a waft of rank air, a snatch of bright teeth and a slash of horn. Jan swung his head with all his might, brought his own weapon down with force enough to knock his assailant’s skewer aside. The blow clamored, reverberating in his skull.

He felt the bite upon his neck begin to bleed, the long shallow rent across his chest blaze hot with pain. Beside him, Lell—scarcely half his size—dodged, trying to get around him, seeking to fall upon their attacker herself. Korr skidded, wheeled. Jan rushed him, mostly to keep himself safely between his young sister and the king. The black prince slapped hard at his sire with the flat of his horn, pounded him with his heels, driving him back, away from Lell and the others.

At last, with a despairing cry, the mad king shook free, wheeled, fled across the valley floor and up the far hillside. Lightning shattered the sky. Rolling thunder pealed. The wind lashed, flailed. Rain became a downpour. Stunned, the herd broke and scattered, scrambling for haven in the caverns and hollows of the surrounding slopes. Without a moment’s hesitation, Jan sprang in pursuit of his sire. Desperately, Tek galloped to intercept him.

“Jan,” she cried. “Hold. Forbear!”

The young prince scarcely checked. “Nay,” he cried furiously. “Nay, not this time! He’ll not evade me more. I’ll have the truth if I must chase it to world’s edge! Take charge of the herd, Tek—I’ll return as soon as may be.”

Below him lay the Pan Woods, home to Sismoomnat and Pitipak’s folk, the two-leggèd goatlings. Until a few short seasons ago, the pans had been among the unicorns’ bitterest foes. Now both peoples enjoyed free forage through one another’s lands. Gazing down, the prince’s eye met nothing but dark woods, sprawling toward horizon’s edge through a grey curtain of rain. He listened, but discerned nothing above the deafening downpour. For all the king’s haggard appearance, he made swift quarry.

The young prince cast back over one shoulder at the Vale, lying deserted in the rain. He eyed the council rise, empty and small-seeming, about which he and his fellows had lately parleyed and danced. He marked his own cave on the hillside below, where Tek and the twins now doubtless sheltered, and felt a twinge. Impatiently, he shook it off. He would be returning in a few hours—at most a day or two. Just as soon as he had found his sire and wrested his terrible secret from him. Surely then all could be put to rights. Jan set his teeth. Without another thought or backward glance, he plunged over the hillcrest into the dark Pan Woods.

Jan splashed to a halt in the middle of the stream and bent his long neck to drink. The water tasted cool in the humid summer air. He shook his sodden coat for perhaps the twentieth time. His head reeled. He had not slept in an evening and a day. It was long past noon. Jan stumbled out of the streambed. He had followed it far enough and found no sign. The young prince felt the hollow ache between his ribs, the weakness in his limbs as he reentered the trees. He would have to feed soon, rest.

A glade opened before him, perfectly round, vegetation carefully cleared from its center. Jan recognized it for a pan place, one of their ceremonial circles. A ring of stones enclosed a heap of ash in the circle’s heart. Young oats and rye grass sprouted among the trees bordering the clearing. Inhaling the lush, verdant scent, the dark unicorn bent his head, tearing greedily at the fragrant, juicy stuff. Leaves and buds augmented his fare. The hollow in his belly began to fill.

A thicket of firs stood near the clearing’s edge. Their strong, resinous aroma beckoned him. Jan nudged aside a spray of boughs and pressed forward, shouldering past outer branches until he reached the hollow interior. The firs stood so close, their spreading foliage so dense, that despite the morning’s rain, the fallen fir needles beneath had remained dry. Only when he had sunk down and folded his limbs under him, did the dark unicorn realize how exhausted he was.

His heart rocked against his ribs. Breathing deep, he settled himself into the soft, fragrant carpet. Jan laid his head along his outstretched forelegs. His eyes closed once, opened, closed again. He thought of Korr and resolved to rest only briefly before going on. The gaunt, dark unicorn fled before him in dreams. Hooded serpents swarmed. The young prince twitched, eyelids fluttering, as a viper rose to strike the king. He who had never danced the serpent’s dance, never scratched his flank or received the venom-proof blood, cried out as the dream nadder’s fangs pierced him.

Jan felt himself racing, sprinting to fend off the serpent’s sting—too late. The haggard stallion reared, screaming, then fell endlessly away from Jan into a yawning crevasse. The speckled serpents attenuated into a tangle of stars. The young prince found himself still running, galloping along through dark emptiness high above the rolling globe below. Cold wind whipped his mane. He was crossing a bridge, a precarious curve that spanned the whole sky, arcing ever more steeply down to horizon’s edge. In a rush he realized he could not stop, momentum propelling him, hurtling him swift and inevitably toward the end of the world.

The gentle trilling of their panpipes wove through the summer air. Halfway around the circle Jan spotted the piper. Beside him sat a grey-bearded male, horns ribbed with age, and a bare-cheeked female, skin wizened as willow bark. A much younger pair rose from the circle and approached with forepaws clasped. They bowed low before their elders and handed them sheaves of grass in exchange for garlands. By their rich, sweet scent, Jan knew the flowers to be night-blooming lilies. Their perfume blended with the tang of woodsmoke and the aroma of the trees.

The young couple embraced, forelimbs entwining, and retired to the far side of the ring. Jan heard glad murmuring among their fellows as, each with a gesture and a word, the two elders rose and cast their sheaves into the fire. Red sparks flared up, subsided. Jan could only conclude he had witnessed some sort of joining, perhaps even the pledging of mates, and was swept suddenly, keenly, by memory of his own pledging to Tek almost three years past, by the shores of the Summer Sea.

The young prince shook himself, struggled free of the firs. Time to make himself known. The panpipes still crooned their haunting soft song amid the cheerful hubbub. The two elders resumed their places beside the piper as Jan reached the edge of the glade.

“
Emwe!”
he hailed them, framing with care the difficult, champing syllables of pan speech. “Tai-shan nau shopucha.”
Moonbrow greets you.

He moved forward slowly, so as not to startle them, until the firelight illumined his dark form.

“Have no fear. I am Jan, prince of unicorns, come in peace to seek your counsel.”

The pipe player broke off suddenly as the pan campsite erupted in confusion. Jan heard cries of “Pella! Pell’!”—
Look, behold
–and “Sa’ec so!”
Him! It’s him.
Sires and dams caught up their young as though to flee. Others snatched and brandished wooden stakes. He saw children quickly gathering stones. The dark unicorn snorted in bewilderment. Peace with the pans had held these two years running without a whisper of strain.

“Nanapo:
peace,” he exclaimed. “I am no foe. I seek another of my race who has fled and taken shelter here.”

The pans hesitated. Jan himself poised, determined to run if he must and shed no blood. With relief, he saw the old male rise from his haunches and hold up one forelimb.

“Bikthitet nau,” he heard the greybeard urging:
Calm yourselves.
“This is not the same
ufpútlak—
four-footed walker—we encountered earlier. Though dark as the other,
pella
–observe—he does not have that one’s wild, unreasoning air. A great green feather tangles this one’s mane. And this
ufpútlak
speaks our tongue.”

Jan’s heart seized at the other’s words. He moved a half pace nearer. The pans twitched, pulled back, but did not flee. The greybeard held his ground.

“Elder, have you seen another of my kind this day?” Jan asked urgently. “A night-dark stallion such as I, but lawless, gaunt—It is he I seek.”

Carefully, the bearded male nodded. Around him, the goatlings murmured, uneasily. The aged female, now risen to stand beside her mate, answered, “Such a one came upon us near noon this day. What can you tell us of him?”

Jan drew a deep breath. “He is Korr, king of the unicorns.” Gasps, angry cries rose again from the goatling band. The furrows in the brows of the two elders deepened.

“If he is Korr,” the greybeard said evenly, “do you, Jan, prince of
ufpútlaki,
now come to revel in your broken truce?”

The young prince’s ribs constricted. “I come seeking him,” he answered slowly, carefully. “He is my sire, and he is mad. Having fled our Vale this day, he now imperils not only himself and his folk, but our allies as well. I must find him and return him to the Vale, that his madness may be healed.”

More murmuring from the pans. They eyed him, suspicious still. He sensed a slight—if only very slight—easing in the two elders. The fire crackled. The young prince waited. No one spoke. Finally he broke the silence.

“Tell me, I implore you, where I may find him. What deeds of his have made you so wary and put our peoples’ hard-won truce in jeopardy?”

Glancing at one another, the elders considered. The rest of the goatlings held silent, watching. At last, the wizened female spoke.

“This midday,” she said, “while we rested in the shade of the brittle-blossom trees, this mad
ufpútlak
stampeded among us, cursing us—so we surmise—in his own tongue. None were spared: not elders nor suckling young.” Her tone grew hard. “Even children he would eagerly have trampled, had fathers and mothers not snatched them from his path.”

Jan felt the blood drain from him at the thought of the mad king charging unchecked among these slight, retiring goatlings, only lately come to trust unicorns. “Did he harm any of you?” the young prince breathed, praying to Alma his worst fears might not prove true.

“Nay,” the greybeard replied, and Jan’s heart eased. “To our relief, your king drew no blood. We fled and dodged. Our warriors drove him off with volleys of stones—as we shall drive away all unicorns from this day forward! Your king is well-bruised. He fled toward the grassy land that borders our Woods. What do you call it? The Plain.”

Jan’s breath caught in dismay. The Plain was far more dangerous than the Woods: rife with grass pards that ambushed their prey. Sharp-toothed dogs that hunted in packs. Unicorns, too, roamed the Plain—wild wanderers outside the Ring of Law, of a tribe other than Jan’s own. Korr had sworn eternal enmity toward these so-called Renegades. If he were reckless enough to attack Plainsdwellers as he had this goatling band, he would do so at his peril. The Free Folk of the Plain were as dauntless in their own defense as any Ringborn unicorn. Jan set his teeth. He must fly with all speed to intercept his sire.

“My heart grieves with you that this outlaw from my Vale has caused you such alarm,” he answered, bowing deeply before the two elders of the goatling band. “My own tribe as well has suffered such inexplicable acts of his madness. A terrible secret haunts his mind. I mean to discover it.”